Movies: New and Noteworthy

COMING THIS WEEK

By Steven Rea

The Walk (Wednesday in IMAX theaters only, opening wide Oct. 9). French daredevil Philippe Petit's historic high-wire hike between the twin towers of the World Trade Center are brought to 3D life, replete with vertiginous visual effects and Joseph Gordon- Levitt speaking zee English with zee accent Francais. PG

Sicario Emily Blunt is an FBI agent brought aboard a team of shifty Feds and freelancers doing battle with a Mexican drug cartel. Benicio Del Toro and Josh Breslin costar in the gritty, violent border-crossing thriller. R

Time Out of Mind Richard Gere wanders the streets of New York, broke and broken, in this verité drama about the homeless crisis, inspired by the Italian neorealists and Robert Bresson. No MPAA rating

Hillsong: Let Hope Rise This documentary looks at the rise of the Australia-based Christian band Hillsong. Opens Wednesday

The Martian Matt Damon stars as an American astronaut in a desperate struggle for survival after being presumed dead and left on the surface of Mars.

Reviewed by critics Steven Rea (S.R.), Tirdad Derakhshani (T.D.), Dan DeLuca (D.D.), Molly Eichel (M.E.), and Gary Thompson (G.T.). W.S. denotes a wire-service review.

Amy An extraordinary documentary about Amy Winehouse, the British singer who died in 2011 at 27, a victim of too much drink, too many drugs, and too much fame. Soul-stirring, heartbreaking, the film uses a trove of archival film, much of it shot on smartphones by friends, lovers, bandmates, roadies, record execs, and fans, to trace the life and blazing career of the singer and songwriter with the trademark beehive, the tats, and the fearsome talent. 2 hrs. 08 R (drugs, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution This documentary looks at the controversial organization dedicated to black power. 1 hr. 53 No MPAA rating - G.T.

Mistress America A screwball comedy about female friendship, betrayal and theft, starring the crazily gesticulative Greta Gerwig as a know-it-all New Yorker who decides to mentor a lonely college freshman new to the big city, played by Lola Kirke. Noah Baumbach directs, from a screenplay he and Gerwig collaborated on, between breaks watching Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges. 1 hr. 24 R (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Black Mass Johnny Depp utterly transforms himself, in the role of James "Whitey" Bulger, the Boston mobster who racketeered and murdered his way to power in the '70s and '80s. Directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart), with strong performances from Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Edgerton and Dakota Johnson. Dark, bloody, harrowing. 2 hrs. 02 R (violence, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Captive David Oyelowo plays a psychopath wanted for murder who takes as a hostage a single mother (Kate Mara) struggling to overcome a drug addiction. Her reading and sharing passages from the book "The Purpose- Driven Life" helps diffuse the tense hours they spend together as he battles the "demon" inside his mind. 1 hr. 37 PG-13 (mature thematic elements involving violence, and substance abuse) - W.S.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl A 15-year-old girl in freewheeling '70s San Francisco has an affair with her mother's boyfriend in this honest, personal, and unblurred examination of a tricky voyage into womanhood. It may sound scandalous, or exploitative, or deeply inappropriate, but the film - written and directed by Marielle Heller, adapted from Phoebe Gloeckner's graphic novel - is none of those things. Instead, it's a revelation. Bel Powley stars, with Kristin Wiig and Alexander Skarsgard. 1 hr. 41 R (sex, nudity, profanity, drugs, adult themes) - S.R.

The End of the Tour Infinite Jest author and literary star David Foster Wallace is interviewed by a writer for Rolling Stone, and the two men bat around ideas big and small for five days in this beautiful, brainy, funny, poignant road movie. Jason Segel stars as the grungy, self-deprecating Wallace; Jesse Eisenberg plays the New York journalist David Lipsky, whose memoir about his conversations with the late Wallace became a book -

and now this film. 1 hr. 46 R (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Learning to Drive Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley team up for a small, artfully crafted story of companionship, loneliness, resilience. She's a New York literary critic who has just been dumped by her husband; Kingsley is an Indian Sikh who gives the suddenly shell-shocked and single middle-aged woman driving lessons. The driving metaphors don't need any added emphasis: Put the car (and your life) in forward; be aware and anticipate; control your rage; know where you're going. 1 hr. 30 R (profanity, sex, adult themes) - S.R.

The New Girlfriend A woman discovers something surprising about the husband of her late friend in this ironic, if strangely suspenseful, gender-bending dramedy about self-discovery and self-acceptance. French with subtitles. 1 hr. 48 R (strong sexual content, graphic nudity) - T.D.

Queen of Earth Elisabeth Moss and Katherine Waterston are incredible in this eerie view of a woman's breakdown. Catherine (Moss) is having a bad year. Her father has just died, her boyfriend has dumped her for another woman. She's breaking. She seeks solace at the lake house of her best friend (Waterston), who only seems to augment her paranoid descent. 1 hr. 30 No MPAA rating (intense situations, language) - M.E.

Shaun the Sheep Shaun takes the day off and winds up with more action than he bargained for in this animated family feature. 1 hr. 25 PG (rude humor) - G.T.

Ashby (Not previewed) After moving to a new town with his single mom, a brainy teen (Nat Wolff) befriends a girl (Emma Roberts) and his elderly neighbor, an ex-CIA assassin with months to live (Mickey Rourke). 1 hr 42 R

A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velásquez Story **1/2 Lizzie Velásquez suffers from a rare congenital disease that prevents her from gaining weight. Blind in one eye and impossibly thin at 58 pounds, she has been picked on and bullied since childhood. At 17, she came across a cruel YouTube video but has since become an inspirational public figure with a series of articulate posts on her own YouTube channel. 1 hr. 28 No MPAA rating (thematic elements involving bullying, profanity) - T.D.

A Brilliant Young Mind *** This story of a boy genius is a movie about the complex emotional lives of autistic children. Nathan (Asa Butterfield) is unable to engage with his single mom (Sally Hawkins). He qualifies to attend a math camp in Taiwan and must leave his carefully structured life in England. When he meets a Chinese girl (Jo Yang) from a rival team, his feelings about engaging the outside world begin to change. 1 hr 41 No MPAA rating - G.T.

Cooties ** Bad chicken nuggets infect elementary school kids who turn into bloodthirsty zombies. A group of teachers - played in part by Elijah Wood, Allison Pill, and Rainn Wilson - band together to survive in this horror-comedy that's not nearly as funny or as scary as it wants to be. 1 hr. 28 R (horror violence and gore, language including sexual references, and some drug use) - M.E.

Everest *** Dramatic thriller based on the true story of the struggle for survival faced by members of a Mount Everest climbing expedition when they are caught in a blizzard. 2 hrs. 01 PG-13 (intense peril and disturbing images) - G.T.

The Gift *** The lives of a happily married couple take a dark turn after a mysterious former acquaintance of the husband shows up. Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall, and Joel Edgerton star. 1 hr. 48 R (Profanity) - G.T.

Goodnight Mommy ** Twin brothers notice mysterious differences in their mother after she returns home from reconstructive surgery. German with subtitles. 1 hr. 09 R (violence) - G.T.

Hotel Transylvania 2 *** In this sequel that's better than the original, Dracula (Adam Sandler) has just become a new vampa (a vampire grandpa). Everyone is waiting to see whether Dennis will be like his mom (Selena Gomez) and sprout fangs, or end up like his dad and be human. If Dennis doesn't get his fangs by the time he turns 5, it will be too late, so Dracula plans to scare the monster into the infant. One reason the film works so much better is that the action is divided between life in the monster and human worlds. 1 hr 27 PG (some scary images, rude humor) - W.S.

The Intern *** Anne Hathaway is an e-commerce entrepreneur, Robert De Niro a retiree who becomes her eager aide, in Nancy Meyers' impossibly charming generation gap comedy - make that generation chasm. The business and personal crises fly, but don't worry, De Niro's septuagenarian gent is ready to provide sage counsel. And Rene Russo, as the company's in-house masseuse, is ready to provide back rubs. PG-13 (profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials *** The saga continues with the Gladers facing their most difficult challenge yet. 2 hrs. 11 PG-13 (violence and action, some thematic elements, substance use, language) - G.T.

Meet the Patels *** This adorable documentary about actor Ravi Patel trying to find a suitable wife also shines a light on what's it like to be the child of immigrants, wanting to live an assimilated life, while also honoring culture. 1 hr. 28 PG (thematic elements) - M.E.

Meru **1/2 Filmmaker Jimmy Chin documents his ascent - along with friends - to the top of Meru, a Himalayan mountain harder to climb than Everest. But the facts are a bit too wishy-washy for documentary standards. 1 hr. 27 R (profanity) - G.T.

Pawn Sacrifice *** This weirdly trippy movie re-creates the monumental 1972 chess match between tormented American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) and Soviet grand master Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). As the title rather clumsily implies, Pawn Sacrifice presents the descending-into-madness Fischer as an expendable gamepiece in a ruthless geopolitical contest waged by shadowy intelligence agencies on behalf of powerful governments. 1 hr 54 PG-13 (brief strong language, some sexual content, smoking) - G.T.

The Second Mother *** Val (Regina Casé) is a live-in housekeeper whose life is thrown into disarray when the daughter she left comes to stay with her while applying to university. The Second Mother is an interesting look at generational and class divides in Brazil, without the feel of a lecture or lesson. 1 hr. 54 R (language and brief drug use) - M.E.

Sleeping With Other People *** Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey (Allison Brie) are disasters in relationships. So instead of ruining each other with sex, they strike up a friendship that turns into something more. But Leslye Headland's second film (after the polarizing Bachelorette) dissects the rom-com and puts it back together again to feel wholly fresh. 1 hr 41 R (sexual content, language, drug use) - M.E.

Stonewall *1/2 A well-meaning, if seriously wrongheaded, attempt to depict the events surrounding the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York, which put gay rights on the national map as a bona fide civil rights issue. The gay characters come off either as straight or as over-the-top caricatures, while their actions are depicted with such fantastical theatricality that they feel entirely unreal. 2 hr 09 R (for sexual content, profanity, some violence, drug use). - T.D.

Straight Outta Compton *** Legendary gangsta rappers N.W.A. get the biopic treatment. The film follows Ice Cube (played by the real rapper's son, O'Shea Jackson Jr.), Dr. Dre, Eazy E, and crew as they come up in Compton - easily the movie's best part - through their record- company-related woes, featuring Paul Giamatti wearing cinema's worst hairpiece. 2 hrs. 02 R (profanity) - G.T.

The Transporter: Refueled ** Frank Martin, replacing Jason Statham in the series, is rocker-turned-actor Ed Skrein, aiding a small squad of hookers seeking revenge on the Eastern Bloc(head) pimps who put them on the streets as preteens - and borrowing extensively from Alexandre Dumas. 1 hr. 35 PG-13 (violence, sexual material, language) - G.T.

The Visit **1/2 Hansel and Gretel with a shakycam, M. Night Shyamalan's toe-dip into low-budget horror is a "found footage" pic, a slow-build affair with funny gags thrown into the mix, in which a camcorder-toting teenage brother and sister hop the train from Philly to spend a week in the country with the grandparents they've never met. Nana and Pop Pop prove to be scarily strange. 1 hr. 34 R (violence, scares, profanity, adult themes) - S.R.

A Walk in the Woods **1/2 Robert Redford plays real-life travel writer Bill Bryson, who decides to hike the Appalachian Trail - no, really, hike it, not going to visit his mistress - with his pal (Nick Nolte), a chubby, wheezing, recovering alcoholic. Redford gets a chance, long overdue, to be funny during the charmingly hopeless endeavor. 1 hr. 38 R (language) - G.T.